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Comment by 4ggr0 | Hacker News Reader

I'm currently using TeamViewer on a single PC, but I'm searching for an alternative. Big plus if the alternative is OSS + self-hosted, but I'm open to other solutions.

My current workflow is -> Connect to HomeVPN -> Turn on Gaming PC with WakeOnLAN -> Connect with TeamViewer to start Steam -> Start gaming with Steam RemotePlay. I did not find a way for Steam to autostart without logging into Window, that's the only reason I currently use TeamViewer, essentially to login and start Steam.

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If you enable auto login on Windows as well as tell Steam to open on login, it should cut out those steps from your workflow.

Edit: here's a link that tells you how to do that. It's a bit involved since you have to mess with Registry keys, but it should be possible https://www.alphr.com/how-to-enable-auto-login-in-windows-10...

That would indeed be a possibility, but I'm absolutely not a fan of not requiring any authentication to power-on and use my PC :D

Fair enough. Since you mentioned it's a Gaming PC specifically, I assume this is a machine that's only used for that. In that case I personally wouldn't mind leaving it unprotected, but I can understand why someone else would.

Yeah, it is only used for gaming. You know, to be fair, I could enable auto-login without a problem. The probability that someone else turns it on, snoops around and finds something they shouldn't see is close to 0%. But somehow it feels dirty to disable authentication on a device, if you know what I mean.

Try RustDesk. They have a open source server for self-hosting.

This looks very promising after checking out their website and github for a couple of minutes. Thanks for the tip!

Please check out the thread here on Hackernews about Rustdeck and the thread on r/selfhosted.

If I remember correctly, it had some "weird" design decisions (disabling your Wayland install and replacing it with x, being one of them haha).

Chrome Remote Desktop is honestly not a bad option for something like this. It has an unattended mode and you can set long passphrases in addition to 2FA/etc.

I've used this a couple of years ago, did work well, yes. But these days I try to avoid Google, which disqualifies this solution. But thanks for the recommendation anyways!

If you already connect through the VPN then just use the built-in RDP (not available in Home SKU, AFAIR).

You can replace it with NoMachine NX or just with some variant of VNC.

> not available in Home SKU

That's exactly my issue :)

NoMachine/VNC then.

Or if you don't use an MS account to logon then just configure Autologon and shove Steam link to the Autostart

[0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/auto...

Guacamole and MeshCentral are both pretty good and can play with windows computers.

If you're using guacamole for an RDP gateway, there's also rdpgw https://github.com/bolkedebruin/rdpgw

Guacamole looks interesting because I could access my PC via HTTP, which would be handy. Just have to check if it works well with no-login autostarts.

MeshCentral looks promising, but RustDeck, which another comment recommended, seems to do the same thing in a more attractive way.

Thanks!

Guacamole is a slightly different use case, it depends on a server in the middle. You connect to Guacamole, it RDPs/VNCs/etc to the target.

Have you tried Parsec?

No, but it looks very interesting. So this would replace TeamViewer and Steam RemotePlay at the same time, not bad. Just not that big of a fan about the pricing. $100 per year just so that my SO can play on their PC at their home, while I'm not at my home, seems a bit steep.

Yeah, my use-case is very specific, I know. I don't even game remote myself, but if I'm on holidays or at work and my partner wants to game from their home, I need a way to be able to power on my PC and everything necessary for it to work. A complete niche, first-world problem :)

I myself use the free tier, didn't miss any of the paid features. It's easily the best, lowest-latency, most no-hassle remote desktop tool I've ever used. Once they add Linux hosting I won't mind shelling out some cash either.

My desktop machine is not in my living room but I like to watch shows on my large TV while gaming from the couch.

I use Parsec and remote to my desktop from my shitty laptop and get much better performance than I would just gaming with an integrated chipset and it's portable. Also, plugging in a usb controller into my laptop automatically controls the desktop without any setup.

Only bad thing I can say is that they got bought by Unity last year and Unity is now merging with IronSource :/

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